Rajaratnam convicted of fraud

www.thehindu.com – Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire investor who once ran one of the world’s largest hedge funds, was found guilty on Wednesday of fraud and conspiracy by a federal jury in Manhattan.

He is the most prominent figure convicted in the government’s crackdown on insider trading on Wall Street.

Mr. Rajaratnam, who was convicted on all 14 counts, could face as much as 19 and a half years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, prosecutors said on Wednesday. He is to be sentenced on July 29.

Mr. Rajaratnam, dressed in a black suit and a khaki green tie, had no expression as the verdict was read in the overflowing courtroom.

His lawyer, John Dowd, said he would appeal.

Prosecutors had asked that Mr. Rajaratnam be placed in custody, arguing that he was a flight risk. They said he had the means to leave the country, noting that he owned property in Sri Lanka and Singapore.

Someone who answered the phone at Rajaratnam’s home and would only describe himself as a family friend expressed surprise at the verdict. Rajaratnam â€œwas confident that nothing would happen,â€ he said

About a half-dozen jurors declined to comment as they left the courthouse.

B.J. Kang, the FBI special agent who led the investigation of Rajaratnam, said he was â€œhappy for justiceâ€ outside the courthouse.

Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for Manhattan, whose prosecutors brought the case against Rajaratnam, said: â€œThe message today is clear, there are rules and there are laws, and they apply to everyone, no matter who you are or how much money you have.â€

Mr. Bharara noted that over the last 18 months his office had charged 47 people with insider trading; Mr. Rajaratnam is the 35th to be convicted.

Wiretap evidence

The government built its case against Mr. Rajaratnam with powerful wiretap evidence. Over a nine-month stretch in 2008, federal agents secretly recorded his telephone conversations. They listened in as Mr. Rajaratnam brazenly and matter-of-factly swapped inside stock tips with corporate insiders and fellow traders.

â€œI heard yesterday from somebody who’s on the board of Goldman Sachs that they are going to lose $2 per share,â€ Mr. Rajaratnam said to one of his employees in advance of the bank’s earnings announcement.

â€œOne thing we know, this is very confidential, someone is going to put in a term sheet for Spansion,â€ he told a colleague, referring to a proposed acquisition of the technology company.

â€œSo yesterday they agreed on, at least they’ve shaken hands,â€ a tipster told Mr. Rajaratnam about an upcoming deal involving another publicly traded business. â€œSo I think, uh, you can now just buy.â€

Wall Street success story

For years, Mr. Rajaratnam was lionised as one of Wall Street’s savviest investors. At its peak, his Galleon Group hedge fund managed more than $7 billion in assets. Investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, counted Galleon, which paid out roughly $300 million in trading commissions annually to brokerage firms, as one of their largest trading clients.

In the early morning hours of October 16, 2009, federal agents arrested Mr. Rajaratnam at his Sutton Place apartment on Manhattan’s East Side. The government placed him at the centre of a vast insider trading conspiracy, accusing him of using a corrupt network of tipsters to earn tens of millions of dollars in illegal trading profits in stocks, including Google and Hilton Worldwide.

The case has led to insider trading charges against 25 defendants 21 of whom have pleaded guilty, including former executives at IBM, Intel and Bear Stearns. Mr. Rajaratnam fought the charges against him, insisting that he had done nothing wrong. His lead lawyer, Dowd, said his client’s success as a money manager came from â€œshoe-leather research, diligence and hard work.â€

Mr. Rajaratnam based his defence on the so-called mosaic theory of investing. Galleon was famous for its dogged digging for information about publicly traded companies that would form a â€œmosaicâ€ a complete picture of a company’s prospects that gave it an investment edge over other investors.

Mr. Rajaratnam’s lawyers argued that all of his supposed illegal trading was grounded in publicly available newspaper articles, analyst reports and company news releases.

For instance, defence presented evidence showing that before Advanced Micro Devices acquired ATI Technologies, a deal that prosecutors said Mr. Rajaratnam had received an illegal tip about, 51 news articles and six analyst reports speculated on the likelihood of a merger between the two companies.

Prosecutors dismantled Mr. Rajaratnam’s defence by acknowledging that Galleon performed legitimate research. But at the same time, they argued, the firm routinely violated securities laws. In the words of a former Galleon portfolio manager who testified during the trial, the firm did its homework but also cheated on the test.

â€œThe defendant knew the rules, but he did not care,â€ said a prosecutor, Reed Brodsky, in his summation. â€œCheating became part of his business model.â€

Mr. Rajaratnam’s arrest halted a remarkable Wall Street success story. A native of Sri Lanka, Rajaratnam came to the United States in 1981 to study business at the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined Needham & Co., a small investment bank, and carved out a reputation as an expert in technology companies.

Ascent coincided with tech boom

His ascent coincided with both the tech boom of the 1990s and the emergence of hedge funds, a once obscure pocket of the investment world, into a powerful force on Wall Street. When he formed his own hedge fund, Galleon Group, in 1997, his services were in hot demand. Mr. Rajaratnam posted superior investment returns, attracting blue chip investors like New Jersey’s state pension fund and UBS, the giant Swiss bank.

Galleon brought Mr. Rajaratnam great wealth. Forbes magazine pegged his net worth at $1.3 billion. He owns a second home in the wealthy suburb of Greenwich, Conn., and a condominium at the Setai Hotel in Miami Beach. During the trial, Mr. Rajaratnam’s former friends told the jury about lavish vacations including, for his 50th birthday, chartering a private jet to fly dozens of family and friends for a safari in Kenya.

Fiercely competitive, Mr. Rajaratnam could be heard during the trial on wiretaps speaking in sports and military metaphors. He compared himself to fighting Muhammad Ali in the boxing ring and said during the financial crisis, â€œI’m feeling the pain, but they can’t kill me. I’m a warrior.â€

It was that competitiveness that caused Mr. Rajaratnam, despite his facing a blizzard of incriminating evidence, to fight the charges against him, according to two former Galleon employees who requested anonymity.

â€œRaj hated to lose and loved a good fight,â€ one former colleague said. â€œHe’s a big sports fan, and I think in some ways he viewed this trial as a contest.â€

Another said Mr. Rajaratnam took great pride in his accomplishments and refused to admit to any wrongdoing.

â€œThis way, Raj can say he was wrongfully accused,â€ he said.

The origins of Mr. Rajaratnam’s case stretch back more than a decade, but a turning point came in 2006 during an investigation of a hedge fund run by Rengan Rajaratnam, Mr. Rajaratnam’s younger brother and a former Galleon employee. While reviewing e-mails and instant messages, Andrew Michaelson, now a member of the team that prosecuted Mr. Raj Rajaratnam, discovered incriminating communications between the brothers.Â â€” New York Times News Service

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